Showcasing American Photographer Diane Arbus 1923 - 1971

Diane Arbus photographed in 1949

Each month I choose to feature an influential female photographer. This month it is the turn of Diane Arbus – one of the most original and influential artists of the twentieth century.

Arbus photographed a wide range of subjects including strippers, carnival performers, nudists, people with dwarfism, children, mothers, couples, elderly people, and middle class families. Depicting the postwar American social sphere to show the compelling story of the world around her from her and her cameras perspective.

The portrait of Diane Arbus above was taken in 1949 and shows her with her twin-lens Rollieflex camera which produced 6x6 (2.25in) square negatives. Each roll of film has12 exposures.

Equipped with a 55mm f/4 Zeiss lens in order to magnify the sense of unease so prevalent in her portraits.

Statue of Diane Arbus in Central Park 2021-2022

Gillian Wearing a British born artist from Birmingham crafted a bronze statue of Diane Arbus, who took many of her best-known images in Central Park. Wearing’s statue draws attention to the fact that few women are represented in this way, and even fewer visual artists. Presented at street level without a base. Diane stands naturally as if surveying her subjects and wearing clothes she felt most comfortable in. The statue was presented by Public Art Fund and stood in Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park in New York City from October 2021 until August 14, 2022.

The plaque by Diane Arbus’s lifesize statue

In January I’ll be featuring the work of Eve Arnold an American Photojournalist 1912 - 2012.

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Christina Broom Pioneering Press Photographer

Christina Bloom taken by her daughter Winifred prior to the funeral of King Edward VII, May 1910

Christina Broom 28 December 1862 - 5 June 1939

The first female press photographer in the UK has recently been commemorated with a blue plaque, honouring her work as a ‘‘trailblazer“. She worked at the forefront of photography at a time when it was not the accessible medium that it is now.

Broom is described by the organisation as the most prolific female publisher of picture postcards in Britain – a prominent photographer of the suffragette movement and the only female photographer allowed into London barracks and the only photographer permitted regularly into the Royal Mews. Her plaque at 92 Munster Road where she lived and worked for 26 years will be the first blue plaque in Fulham, London.

The ‘Bermondsey B’hoys’ from the 2nd Grenadier Guards appear at ease for this informal photograph taken inside their base at Wellington Barracks sometime during 1914 or 1915

She set up a stall in the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace selling postcards of photographs that she had taken. She maintained this stall from 1904 until 1930. Her ability to capture spontaneous moments with accuracy and skill were her forte.

Broom was a self taught photographer starting with a box camera. Needing a source of income she used this new skill to support her family after her husband Albert’s ironmongery business failed.

When the family moved to Burnfoot Avenue, Fulham she used the coal cellar as her dark room. She was assisted by Winifred her daughter, who had left school to assist her. Albert wrote the captions for the postcards in his neat script. The postcards sold well and in one night-time session Broom printed and sold 1,000 postcards that were collectable and sought after. Albert died in 1912 and Christina and Winifred moved to Munster Road, Fulham.

Suffragette in costume 1909

In 36 years of work Broom took 40,000 images altogether. Winifred was instrumental in safeguarding her mother’s negatives by having them housed in public institutions.

Broom had opted for a half-plate camera, which required a tripod. This was either a Thornton Pickard or a Sanderson. The lens would have had stops of around F5.6 or F.8 to F.64 and shutter speeds around a 15th to 1 second. This slow shutter speed explains why there is often blurred faces and movement in her photographs because her subjects weren’t still long enough.

Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a capture medium in photography. The light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was coated on a glass plate, typically thinner than common window glass. They were heavily used in the late 19th century and declined through the 20th

Captain Greer of the 1st Irish Guards and his machine gun team just prior to leaving for the war. They were all killed in battle soon afterwards taken around 1914-1915.

Nurses and midwives marching to the Albert Hall, Pageant of Women’s Trades and Professions, 27 April 1909

I hope you have found this story as fascinating as I have. Broom’s exceptional work has stood the test of time documenting events for posterity.

Next month I will be featuring the work of photographer Lee Miller 1907 - 1977 – an American photographer and photojournalist. Miller was a fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris, becoming a fashion and fine-art photographer there.

Thanks for reading

Stella

Exploring the world of female photographers starting with Vivian Maier

Self portraits by Vivian Maier

I’m writing a series of blogs exploring the world of female photographers who have shaped the way we see the world by creating a legacy to reflect on.

I’ve chosen to start with Vivian Maier because of her fascinating story. Vivian was relatively unknown as a photographer until shortly before her death on April 21 2009.

Born on February 1st 1926 in New York City of French and Austro-Hungarian extraction Vivian spent most of her formative years in France.

Vivian returned to the U.S in 1951 where she took up work as a nanny. She had taken up the art of street photography two years earlier, refining her craft whilst out with the children and in her leisure time too. It was during this time she built up a vast library of images using her Rolleiflex (a twin lens reflex camera as seen in the photograph top left) on the streets of New York.

Vivian was fortunate to have had her own quarters at work where she used the bathroom as a darkroom to process and print the images. However these historical photographs were not shared with others and were for Vivian’s eyes only and locked away in storage lockers only to be discovered in 2007. Consistently taking photographs over the course of five decades, she would ultimately leave over 100,000 negatives, most of them shot in Chicago – where she moved to in 1956 continuing her work as a nanny and New York City.

An excert from a website about the life of Vivian Maier

‘A free spirit but also a proud soul, Vivian became poor and was ultimately saved by three of the children she had nannied earlier in her life. Fondly remembering Maier as a second mother, they pooled together to pay for an apartment and took the best of care for her. Unbeknownst to them, one of Vivian’s storage lockers was auctioned off due to delinquent payments. In those storage lockers lay the massive hoard of negatives Maier secretly stashed throughout her lifetime.’

I hope you have found the life of Vivian Maier as fascinating as I have?

You can find out more about the life of Vivian Maier via this website .

A contact sheet from Vivian Maier's archives.

“I knew she was talented but it's astonishing what she made of it,” Linda Matthews, who had hired Maier to watch her three children in a Chicago suburb in the 1980s, told the Guardian’s Susanna Rustin in 2014.  

“Who could have imagined she could have left so much behind?"

Next time I will be exploring the world of Christina Broom 28 December 1862 – 5 June 1939 – a Scottish photographer, credited as "the UK's first female press photographer" who went on to photograph royalty.

Thanks for reading

Stella